Brand Portfolio Management
View(s):
Managing a brand portfolio has a lot to deal with naming of brands. Giving a name to a brand can even be more difficult than naming a child of yours. Naming of brands itself is a separate topic that was discussed before but today’s article will highlight the important of managing brand portfolio to penetrate the market in a more meaningful way. It also requires paying careful attention to the space and scope of categories. There are two main approaches that an organization can follow in searching for solutions.
- House of Brands – ‘House of Brands’ is about having different brands under one roof. Hemas consumer Brands, Unilever Sri Lanka, Nestle Lanka, Link Natural etc are examples for this approach. Hemas consumer brands have launched completely different brands for each category and everything under Hemas Consumer would go under the corporate brand – “Hemas” but each category has its own brand and at times within the category there are many sub brands to cater different market segments. Under the hair-care category Hemas has two main brands; Pro- Sport and Gold. Overall, for main categories, Hemas has separate brands; Baby Care Category – Baby Cheramy, Hair Care Category – Kumarika, Oral Care Category – Clograd, Under Home-care, detergent category – Diva etc are well known leading brands that are marketed by Hemas Consumer Brands.
- Branded House – This approach is more suitable for services sector as all the products are branded under one umbrella with extensions. Banks, Insurance companies, Telco companies are best examples for this. Banks will have separate brands for each product such as; senior citizens, youth saving, Child Saving, FDs, Credit Cards, Loan facilities etc. They all will carry the main brand of the institution with an extension in the market to show which category they belong to. For example, Sri Lanka Insurance has; Motor Plus for motor insurance where Sri Lanka Insurance is the corporate brand but the product brand is Motor Plus. SANASA General Insurance is the corporate brand and SGIC Motor insurance is the product brand. When there are service extensions such as posting a picture and leaving the accident cite after an accident is a service extension that goes under the brand – SGIC Snap-n-go. Sri Lanka Insurance Life will have Minimuthu for children, Yashtitya for senior citizens, and many other brands under the portfolio of Life Insurance for different purposes carrying SLIC as a part of the brand. There are certain product brands too that follow the same approach. For example, Maliban biscuits will have many individual brands such as Maliban Cream Cracker, Maliban Chocolate biscuits, Maliban – Ginger etc for biscuits and Maliban Milk for Milk Powder. Maliban uses the corporate brand across many categories.
- Hybrid Method – This may be a mix or blend of both approaches elaborated above. CBL uses hybrid method in managing their portfolio. Biscuit category of CBL would go under the brand – Munchee, the chocolate category would go under the brand – Ritzbury, Cake category would go under the brand – Tiara and the rest of its food products would go under individual brand names such as; Samaposha for cereal, Lanka Soy for soya meat products, Sera for cooking aids etc. There aren’t many tea brands in Sri Lanka which have followed the mix approach. Most tea brands have only followed the “Branded-House” approach such as Dilmah, Akbar, etc would always go with their corporate brand.
“Empire tea” has taken a different approach where the corporate brand would go as Empire for bulk tea and other private label or co-branded products. When it comes to the market which the company serves there are two main brands that are catering to three ends in the international markets.
Empire Teas is probably one of the top five exporters of teas in Sri Lanka, proudly taking Ceylon tea to the world under three brands.
Empire is the brand which caters to the bulk buyers who would buy tea for further processing and packing in their own countries. Company maintains three other main brands as follow with a clear stratey.
Thurson caters to the top-end of the market comes with superior quality, slightly higher prices, and more value-added products than mere black tea.
Association of Blue and Gold as the main colours to denote quality, serenity and luxury. Hyson caters to the middle-end of the market – goes at a slightly lower price compared to Thurson, Red and Yellow colour association to relate to the F&B Category. Akina is for the teas that are coming from Africa or African origin teas which are planted and processed in Africa.
In Conclusion we have many similar case stuies that can be cited from the Sri Lankan market. It’s interesting to see how each strategy works for different brands and different companies when adopted well to suit the strategy than merely using it for naming brands.
HitAd.lk is the best and biggest mobile phone market in Sri Lanka, and we guarantee you will find what you need here from our extensive listing of mobile phones for sale in Sri Lanka. Whether it’s a budget-priced smartphone for communication, or higher end features with advanced connectivity, there are many different options from which to choose from on our site!